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Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

swapnilchauhan.com

101–110 of 284 posts

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway. So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that. Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and…

I've been heavily dealing with the existential questions you are referencing but it only gets worse. What helped you in resolving those issues or come to terms with them?

Adyashanti helped a lot. End of your world book in specifically. I think one of the main takeaways was to instead of running away from these questions or thoughts welcome them and experience them. Don't try to distract yourself when a thought comes. Just embrace it. It will weaken the power of the thoughts or feelings. At the end of the day they are all mere appearances in awareness and not permanent. They go away.

There is also a lecture series on Advaita Vedanta on YouTube. That helped as well.

https://youtu.be/gEd22QZF_mM?si=iDIXY1oUhOC9PaHm

Meditation helped a lot.

Spending time in nature a lot helped. Camping under trees helped..

Also Jordan Peterson's biblical lectures also surprisingly helped even though I was not brought up Christian. I know he is divisive but the lectures are not political.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4zj0nQN08ewq9dl1e8MCz3Y...

Also just praying and believing in a higher power helped.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#103
TIL: there are randoms in the world who feel the exact what I feel, on daily basis for past three or four years.

It is frustrating. One recent mindset change I have adopted that reduces the feeling of overwhelming is:

1. Say it out loud, "I have plenty of time" and breathe deeply

2. "I have to work within constraint for which I do not have control of"

3. Can things be a lot more worse then they are? Fortunately, the answer to this has been 100% yes. Things can be worse in terms of developing complicated medical condition to family complication.

4. There always be be 'noise', work on reducing it and accept the 'distractions' are noise. Since distraction is noise, ignore it instead of giving into it.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#105
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know it’s a bit of a personal question, but can you elaborate on your ego diluting experience?

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway. So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that. Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and…

> Now I don't have a story in which I live on.

Lately, I've had this intuition that we change by sort of tricking ourselves. The mechanism for that change is by settling on like this one kind of character, like someone out of a movie that’s playing in your head, and acting like that person. Then, as time passes, we simply forget who we were before we started acting and the only way we know how to act is as this one character.

You say you've lost your 'story' and your 'character', that you don't 'act' anymore.

But, it just feels like you've made another story and another character for you to fit into. You've got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that's what the 'character' you try to fit would do.

And by acting like that person in your head would, you start to feel the same way too.

I think it's a lot more complicated than how I'm thinking. But I really do have a strong intuition that people feel the way they think the person they're acting like should feel, when physical feelings are non-factors.

Really, I don't actually know. Like, what we actually do and what we say we do; what we actually think and what we say we think. What we say we do and think feel like things we're saying to trick ourselves into doing and thinking those things. That's I guess the core of my intuition.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway. So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that. Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and…

> Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Lately, I've had this intuition that we change by sort of tricking ourselves. The mechanism for that change is by settling on like this one kind of character, like someone out of a movie that’s playing in your head, and acting like that person. Then, as time passes, we simply forget who we were before we started acting and the only way we know how to act is as this one c…

Did you experience this or are you guessing?

Because I think you are thinking this again through ego.

I don't have a thought that I appreciate sunset when I see one. The sunset looks magical. There is a shift in experience. Before watching sunset was like watching in 420p. Now it's 4k. The consciousness is heightened. You only see the sunset. You don't think of old memories of sunset. Or random events from past or thing you have to do. You just see the sunset.

It's not the commentary that changed from hey yet another sunset to I appreciate sunset.

The commentary is gone or minimised and the resolution is increased. And there are no memories from past to distract you from experiencing the sunset.

And this applies to most things. It's just nature has a lot of stuff that work well with heightened awareness. You don't want to spend your time with a heightened awareness and live next to a highway. That works against you.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#107
post #44

I struggle with this myself, especially around writing. My solution, from a coding perspective: If I had a massive new app to build, it would indeed feel overwhelming if I felt like I just had to sit down and build it. I think we get extra stuck on that with writing, as it often feels like we just need to go from an empty page to a well-reasoned and edited blog post, with a lot of ambiguous struggle in between. With…

Welcome to product management! :)

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#108
post #22

If I had to sum up the reason in one word, it would be laziness. Wild to read this from a modern perspective. It's like reading about women being shamed for being 'hysterical', or religious peasants blaming their natural sexual feelings on demons. It just doesn't hold up to scrutiny... What is 'laziness' when applied to something that you clearly want to do? How can someone want something, yet simultaneously choose t…

It's unfortunate that I had to scroll to the bottom of the page to see any mention of ADHD or executive dysfunction, when the linked post describes what is clearly a form of executive dysfunction! Instant temporary treatment is a stimulant such as caffeine (which has annoying side-effects) or amphetamine salts (commonly known as adderall). Long-term treatment is exercize, which can be as simple as balancing on one le…

How is exercise a substitute for stimulant drugs? I've never seen this proven before; I've only seen correlations between people who are able to consistently exercise and people who have less severe ADHD, but that doesn't teach us anything we didn't already know (namely that consistent exercise is made more difficult by ADHD).

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be really hard to understand without experiencing it. But I will write down anyway. So before dilution I had this strong idea of who I was. I had this back story. There were certain things I do. And certain things I don't do. I used to judge everyone. I had a very high opinion about myself and used to constantly do or find things to validate that. Now I don't have a story in which I live on. Each and…

I've been heavily dealing with the existential questions you are referencing but it only gets worse. What helped you in resolving those issues or come to terms with them?

I find that Islam has the most satisfying and complete answers about these existential questions.

Re: Procrastination and the fear of not being good enough

#110

I just want to appreciate how the author used the sane "fear of not being good enough" instead of the idiotic "impostor syndrome" that everyone uses to mean the same.

"Imposter syndrome" is just the term we have given to "fear of not being good enough". What is wrong with coming up with a term for that fear?

I don't agree with medicalization of normal human experience. It's not a syndrome if it happens to everyone and it's perfectly normal. It's also a way to justify being a pussy, which is a sentiment I don't condone under any circumstance.
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